Industry news

Southern Water has opened a new Brighton call centre in response to the national private sewage transfer (PST).

Workplace specialists TSK designed the facility which will house 80 people. The site has been developed to help and support the anticipated rise in volume of issues concerning the implication of the PST legislation.

JDA Software Group, Inc. has announced that Marks & Spencer plc, the United Kingdom’s leading retailer of quality clothing, food and home products, has licensed multiple solutions across JDA’s best-of-breed, supply chain management solutions.

“JDA Software has the proven retail solutions that will help Marks & Spencer deliver supply chain efficiencies across a broad portfolio of brands and categories,” said Andrew Skinner, merchandising director, Marks & Spencer.

“By leveraging JDA’s solutions and support, Marks & Spencer expects to improve in-store availability, reduce end of-season markdowns, and increase the efficiency of our supply chain operations. JDA’s technology will provide Marks & Spencer with the inventory visibility we need to make more profitable decisions, help match our strategic and tactical plans with local customer preferences and drive overall profitability.”

Wyse Technology, a player in cloud client computing, has announced that it has acquired Trellia, a cloud-based mobile infrastructure management vendor.

The Trellia acquisition adds a specific set of technology IP and expertise to present and future Wyse infrastructure management software solutions aimed at helping organizations speed deployment of cloud client computing.

"We will extend the benefits of software as a service (SaaS) to intelligent mobile infrastructure and content managemen," said Tarkan Maner, President and CEO of Wyse. "Combining the IP innovation, skills, resources, and our joint focus on customer advocacy, our goal is to enable enterprises, service providers and telcos to deliver secure infrastructure and content management from the cloud for any user, anywhere, and at any time. We are committed to accelerating the fast adoption of cloud client computing, and in expanding Wyse's enterprise-grade management, cloud and virtualization software portfolio."

Centrica plc, the parent company of British Gas, has signed a strategic agreement with Statoil ASA for the supply of 50 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas to the UK.

The 10 year, NBP-linked gas supply contract begins in 2015 and secures sufficient gas to meet around five per cent of total UK annual demand, enough for 3.5 million homes. With Britain currently importing around 50 per cent of its gas requirements, the announcement underlines the strategic importance of the Norwegian relationship to UK energy security.

In a separate transaction, Centrica also announced it has reached agreement with Statoil Petroleum AS to acquire a focused package of producing and development oil and gas assets in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea, for a cash consideration of US$1,525 million (£965 million).

Xerox Managed Print Services has been awarded a five-year enterprise print services contract by British Airways (BA) and tasked with cutting the airline's total print and mailing costs by up to a quarter.

The contract, which is for an undisclosed value, marks an expansion of Xerox's existing contract for the delivery of printed materials, which it has held since 1995, to include the mailing contract previously held by Pitney Bowes

Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust has decided to outsource its IT function to CSC.

The contract is worth £45 million over a 10-year period and was signed during the publication of a NAO report which criticised CSC’s role in the National Programme for IT (NPfIT).

Workday Inc. has announced that Rentokil Initial plc, one of the largest business services companies in the world, has selected Workday as its global human resources (HR) system of record.

"With 66,000 employees in more than 50 countries and a diverse offering of services, Rentokil Initial is the definition of a global company," said Dave Duffield, co-CEO and chief customer advocate at Workday. "Workday is excited to play a role in Rentokil Initial's initiatives to increase efficiencies throughout its company."

University Hospitals of Leicester (UHL) trust is looking for a commercial partner to transform IT and communications for itself and other local health service organisations.

It has published a framework tender worth up to £600m over 15 years for a "managed business partner for IM&T transformation". Its own IT spending of £13m a year would account for nearly a third of this, although the deal will extend to its unified communications and extra transformational work. It does not currently have a major ICT provider.

Dassault Systèmes, one of the world’s leading 3D and PLM solutions providers; and Capgemini, a world leader in IT consulting, technology services and outsourcing, has announced the signature of an alliance around the integration of Dassault Systèmes’ PLM Version 6 solutions.

This collaboration will accelerate the implementation and deployment of PLM solutions based on the value of Dassault Systèmes’ Version 6, an open online platform allowing an expanded user community to create, collaborate and experience products virtually in a 3D environment, throughout the innovation cycle, ensuring IP protection. It will also strengthen the capacity to integrate PLM technologies in more complex client environments, such as ERP applications, or proprietary application development.

Patrick Longuet, Capgemini France Aerospace & Defense, explains, “Through this partnership, we are aiming to position ourselves as European leader in the PLM solution integration market in different sectors, in particular aerospace and defense. Our unique expertise as a global integrator, will be enhanced with greater PLM skills, plus expertise around Dassault Systèmes solutions to better meet clients’ needs. At first, this global partnership will focus on France and Europe.”

Despite how far advanced cloud vendors claim they are against the competition, cloud computing is still in its infancy, and there is a long way to go before a de facto standard of service delivery is established – especially as every vendor has their own take on cloud and application management tools.

IPsoft recently undertook some research into what effect this proliferation of different cloud services has on IT managers. It found that decision makers are adopting a multi-vendor approach to cloud, with more than one in ten reporting that they use ten or more suppliers.

This is an incredibly surprising figure. Sure, one might argue that the use of a multitude of suppliers demonstrates that the IT industry now has a very deep level of understanding of the cloud and knows how it can have the most business impact. But knowledge and understanding can only take you so far – the amount of time involved in managing over ten different clouds will be astronomical and unproductive.

The research also found that this multi-vendor approach to cloud has resulted in only 18% of businesses having access to a single view of their service status, with a further 34% unsure of how they manage their cloud infrastructure.

As businesses adopt cloud computing they should be thinking about how best to manage what they are outsourcing. It was not anticipated that we would see so few companies having a single view of what they are putting into the cloud. IT managers need to look at their infrastructure and ask themselves ‘can I really manage ten vendors or am I just increasing the complexity of my job?’

Whilst the majority of businesses are investing or using the cloud, over a quarter of decision makers admit that they have concerns about cloud sprawl and the increasing complexities they face with managing multiple cloud services. This indicates that although businesses see the benefits of going to the cloud, they are struggling to manage the new infrastructure which could lead to major problems in the future.

Outsourcing to multiple cloud vendors is a huge issue which has the potential to affect the IT managers who don’t have adequate management systems in place. There is no doubt that whilst cloud excitement hasn’t stalled yet, it has the potential to impact end results and have a negative effect on projects as confusion sets in. This will be especially true in a few years’ time, as different cloud applications are used for each and every business process.

My advice to any organisation adopting cloud would be to ensure a single management solution is in place, as this will help the IT department organise and manage multiple cloud vendors in real time and ensure the worry of sprawl is eliminated from the outset.